In grinding, polishing and polishing operations on various surfaces, special materials are usually used, called abrasives. These can be devices of different designs and shapes, but they are united by a rough coating or a completely granular structure. For example, sandpaper and a file are classic abrasives. It can also be mechanical devices that implement the function of surface treatment in automatic mode without muscle effort.
Abrasive materials
In nature, you can find many natural abrasives that differ in granular or porous structure. These include minerals, including pomegranate, quartz, some varieties of iron ore, pumice, etc. Some of these rocks are used whole in production, while others are used in processed form. For example, wear-resistant and abrasion-resistant powders are the same abrasives. This is in most cases crushed rocks or metal particles, which can be used in different ways in the finalization of products. But here it is worth moving to another group of abrasive materials - synthetic. It includes artificial diamond, mineral slag, steel shot, etc. Using these materials, you can perform the most complex tasks of polishing and stripping.
Abrasive tools
Unlike abrasive materials, tools are a fixture ready for grinding operations. The most common product of this type are nozzles for grinding and cutting machines. These include saws, grinders, all kinds of carvers and polishing machines, the abrasive being used as the working head. Circles are perhaps the most efficient machining component. Moreover, their effectiveness is determined structurally by the most advantageous placement in the power tool.
Sanding belts used on machine tools are also popular in production. With their help, in-line processing of typical products is realized - often directly on the conveyor. Now it is worth considering household abrasives. It can be the same file with sanding paper, or an abrasive stone in the form of a bar with which the edges of the cutting tool are sharpened.
Abrasive Properties
A high-quality abrasive is characterized by such indicators as wear resistance, hardness, the absence of interactions with chemicals, etc. Moreover, hardness and wear resistance do not always indicate that the abrasive is able to quickly eliminate unnecessary layers from the surface. The tool can be durable and resistant to damage, which is due to the high density and content of fine grain in the structure. But too hard grinding abrasives usually take longer to process the target workpieces. And, on the contrary, coarse grain contributes to the accelerated execution of the same grinding, but it has two drawbacks. Firstly, a large fraction means quick wear. Secondly, with the help of such an abrasive one can rely only on rough processing, excluding the polishing effect.
Types of abrasive treatment
The simplest abrasive techniques involve the use of non-mechanized manual materials. Basically, these are bars made of rocks, which are used in the refinement of malleable surfaces - for example, wood. More advanced methods include working with manual electrical devices. These are small grinding and polishing machines that allow the use of nozzles of various characteristics. In professional areas, an abrasive is also used for sandblasting, which is fed through a special nozzle. Sandblasting equipment works by supplying air under high pressure. During operations, the jet pumped by the compressor literally blows abrasive particles at high speed, affecting the target surface. Carrier streams can also be formed due to water, but additional containers will be required for its storage.
Applications for abrasives
All abrasives are designed to perform, by and large, the same tasks. They consist in removing a certain layer of material from one or another surface. Another thing is that the elimination of unnecessary coverage itself can have different goals - giving the product the right shape, eliminating bumps, cleaning, etc. These operations can be used in everyday life, in workshops of various kinds, as well as in construction and production. So, in the household, regular grinding of wooden flooring is often required. For parquet and some types of laminate polishing abrasive is used. Material in the form of sand and metal particles is used as a consumable for sandblasting. This highly effective method has found application in the workshop. For example, pneumatic devices are used to clean old coatings. Powerful compressor-driven units can spray stale traces of corrosion damage and even scale by spraying metal chips.
Conclusion
Today, there are practically no alternative to abrasives grinding and surface cleaning methods. We can mention only high-precision cutting methods, but their function can be replaced by rough processing with the same sandblast. From the point of view of production processes at many large enterprises, abrasives are a completely indispensable technological stage, which allows to give products the necessary parameters. And if in construction, craftsmen can deal with laborious, but rough in nature, methods of grinding and grinding, then in industry precision molding operations are implemented. Moreover, they are performed with solid-state stone and metal structures, which requires the use of special abrasive machines and machine tools.